Game of Thrones

[Flash Gordon]

See "tricking" us into rooting for Dany when she was actually a villain would be clever, but if you're going to do that, you need to be consistent with it.

I find it passing odd the show expects me to regard Dany's torching of Randyl Tarly as proof of her madness...but also cheer Arya cooking Walder Frey's sons into a pie and feeding it to him as bad-ass.
Why am I supposed to see Dany killing Dothraki leaders as an example of how terrible she is...but Sansa feeding Ramsay Bolton to his hounds as justice?
Or executing slave owners versus Jon Snow executing a begging and pleading Janos Slynt?

Yes, Dany has done questionable things—usually to worse people. She has made mistakes—some she's been shown to regret.
But so has every other heroic character in the show.

So if Dany's journey was foreshadowing her slaughtering innocent people in King's Landing, when can we expect Arya to start butchering random innocent people for no reason? Was she not told she had a darkness in her and that she should close many eyes forever?
Oh, right, apparently that was foreshadowing her saving the goddamn world from White Walkers!

It's awfully late for the show to pull that kind of moralism. You can't have almost every hero engage in moral ambiguity just to suddenly declare, oh nope, it was only bad when Dany did it. It doesn't work that way. You have to be consistent with your framing.

And...as others have already pointed out...it's a pretty big and sudden leap to go from burning slave-owners and marauding rapists to torching innocent civilians because...f*** it.

100% agreed.

[Adam Allen]

Awright, so first I want to point out a couple of things I thought were done really well from this last season, to make clear I'm not just jumping on a bandwagon of complaint, or dismissing this season out of hand as not being as good as the previous:

One was Theon's return to defend Winterfell against the Night King's army, and the way the Starks received him for it. Sansa's embracing him and Bran's thanking him, saying he was a good man and was "home" were I thought emotionally powerful moments, and probably the most human either of those characters felt this season. And it was a fantastic ending to Theon's redemption arc. You almost couldn't really mourn his dying in the battle, because he was dying as a hero, a human, a Stark, an Ironborn ... you know, instead of as Reek, or any of the many worse ways he could have died, previously.

Another thing done really well was Brienne's standing and speaking up for Jaime, when he would otherwise likely have been executed, and later his knighting her. Both were well acted and written moments, and both felt organic to me ... these moments felt like a realistic evolution of the individual characters, and of their complex and complicated relationships with one another. From where they began as enemies with nothing but contempt for one another, I felt like these moments showed how their shared respect for honor and duty brought them as close to one another as either character is capable of being. It was really just very well done.

But, secondly, I want to also point out that I do not dislike the ending of the series just because it's not the fairy-tale ending I would have hoped for the characters I like. Even before the Night King had an ice dragon all his own, I really felt like we the audience should not feel surprised or cheated if the last season was all the characters being sequentially killed off as the Night King's army swept through Westeros, with the series finale being their taking King's Landing, an army of the undead staring across the Narrow Sea, having killed every living thing on the one side, already. The army of the undead had been shown as unbeatable, as only growing stronger with every battle, so how should we have not seen that coming, if it were the end that was written? Not what we would have wanted surely, but consistent to the last, it would have been.

So no, I'm not unhappy that my favorite characters did not get a happily-ever-after ending.

That said, Dany's turning all Mad Queen was super abrupt and not well executed, at all. It was not consistent to even this one season, let alone to her series-wide character arc. Likewise Jon, Tyrion, Varys, Jaime, Cersei and more just behaved in arbitrary and inconsistent ways that certainly served to wrap up all the narratives quickly and neatly, but unfortunately did not do justice to the characters as they had been previously established.

Yeah, it definitely could have been worse. It just could have been a whole lot better, too. We're all entitled to like what we like of course, but I don't think there's any justification to suggest that fans who have been with the series from start are just complaining arbitrarily or dishonestly. We're complaining because the series really has dropped off quite a bit in quality.

[Arsenal]

Sansa didn't deserve the ending that she got, what exactly has she done in the entire show?



Eh, Sansa is the last Stark I'd peg for some kind of northern patriot. She mostly takes after her mother and has those elegant and refined southern manners and accent, I suppose the northern lords are loyal to her family but she always seems out of place among them.

I see it less as a "patriot" thing and more of a "I don't want to deal with this ****" type of deal. At that point in time, being Queen of the North probably holds more weight than being Queen of the 7 kingdoms when 6 of those 7 kingdoms are in rough shape. The only thing she would get from accepting the gig is a bunch of head ache.

[Sparta]

You'd think Meera Reed would get more credit. She sacrificed a lot for Bran.

[ZeroBG82]

Yeah the point is the innocent children where not her enemies. Her enemy was in the Red Keep and she burned children instead. You are trying to morally equate killing enemies with killing innocents. It is pretty illogical.

Yes, I am 100% equating killing enemies (who have already surrendered) to killing innocents. Both are awful and should not be respected or tolerated. I'm unclear why that's difficult for you. That seems pretty illogical? You're trying to make this about "innocents vs. enemies." It's not. Killing is bad. Killing is f&$&$&$ awful. At all. I don't care who you're killing, or why. Killing is NOT THE ANSWER. Brutality is never justice. Never.

It's one thing during battle. That is what it is. Kill or be killed. It sucks but it's a thing we can't get around. But what Dany did in Mereen is not logically defensible as any kind of justice. Did she have trials? Was there an investigation into which nobles were involved in, complicit in, or ok with crucifying slaves? Because if even one of the people she crucified was opposed, or not consulted, or not in any way involved, then what she did then was not justice, it was horrific murder.

And the only reason you can excuse is it is because, from your perspective, the people were evil, corrupt, or had it coming. So what happens when you're the one who is seen as evil, or corrupt? What happens when you have it coming?

When Dany chose to burn King's Landing, it was to make a point. That her mercy was not a weapon that could be used against her. The people of King's Landing were not innocent, in her mind. They were human shields for Cersei. And because they were allowing it they were complicit in it. They were just as much soldiers as the Lannister armies (who had already thrown down their weapons as well). She moved the civilians of King's Landing from the 'innocent' column to the 'evil' column.

You're all about burning the evil. You're totally cool with it as long as they deserve it. Moral equivalency, you want to shout. But Dany had the power to decide, and nobody had the power to challenge her judgement. Tomorrow YOU could be the evil. Is it still justice then? There are no appeals, no courts. Just the Mother of Dragons. And if you're guilty, you burn.

We excused her conduct because it disguised itself as justice. It's monstrous. It says as much about us as it does her. Why were we, are we, ok with monstrous actions when perpetrated by the "just" or the "good"?

[remydat]

1. Yeah not going to debate 2019 morals in a fictional universe that is more akin to medieval times. When you fight a war and lose then refuse to submit then you are not an innocent. Fairly simple concept. Dany gave people who tried to kill her a choice. No comparison to innocents who she did not give a choice too.

2. Again find me any evidence of any of the slave masters objecting to crucifying 163 kids. The issue here is Dany went to extreme lengths to punish people who hurt innocent kids and yet you trying to then use that as evidence that she is willing to hurt innocent kids. It is absurd logic.

3. Then I die. If I own slaves then I can be considered evil and corrupt. If I fight to kill someone and then refuse to bend the knee, I can be considered evil and corrupt. That is the way of the world. There is no argument for the innocent people she killed being evil and corrupt hence why it is stupid.

4. Except they weren't human shields because Dany could have killed Cersei without harming them. That is precisely the point. I said earlier it would have made sense if the civilians were in the Red Keep and to prove a point to Cersei, Dany burns down the Red Keep with Cersei and the civilians in there. In that case, Cersei used them as human shields and Dany would have proven a point that her mercy was not a weapon. Instead what we got was Cersei in the Red Keep by herself, and Dany just killing innocent people for no reason. This is absurd. It would be like I robbed a bank and told all my hostages to wait outside and instead of coming inside and killing the me, the police just massacre the hostages outside to prove a point. There is no point in that scenario because the hostages weren't in fact being used as human shields. The fundamental stupidity of the plot is that the civilians were not human shields for Cersei as Cersei could easily have been killed without endangering them. So I think you and the showrunners don't seem to understand the concept of a human shield. For someone to be a human shield, they need to be in close proximity of the target to make it difficult to kill the target without harming the human shield. That is not what we watched. We watched Cersei far removed from the civilians and Dany going after the civilians instead of the person responsible for all her pain.

5. No I am not all for burning evil hence why I have no problem with Dany eventually dying. I have a problem with equating burning evil with burning innocents. This is what you don't seem to get. Dany killing evil people is understandable even if I don't agree with it. It is a part of human nature to want to punish evil doers. What is completely illogical is her killing innocent people who had no value in that moment because again they were not actually being used as human shields.

6. We didn't excuse her actions. We understood her actions because again there is an innate part of human nature that wants to see bad people punished. In the context of a medieval society that hasn't evolved to 2019 moral standards, her actions make sense. What does not make sense is again her burning innocent people for no rational reason.

[Arsenal]

Because we realize that who is on the receiving end of an action is just as important part of the equation as the type of action said person is receiving.

It’s why people are horrified and outraged if 163 children are crucified yet will gladly cheer when 163 child molesters receive the same treatment. We don’t value the lives of bad people so we don’t care what happens to them.

[remydat]

Because we realize that who is on the receiving end of an action is just as important part of the equation as the type of action said person is receiving.

It’s why people are horrified and outraged if 163 children are crucified yet will gladly cheer when 163 child molesters receive the same treatment. We don’t value the lives of bad people so we don’t care what happens to them.

This is apparently a revolutionary concept to some. Although I would add, being ok with the latter doesn't mean it is right. It just means we don't care about it as much as we care about innocents dying. The reasons should be obvious if one is human.

[XPac]

Again, this is a woman who freaked out when Drogon accidentally killed ONE child. Saying she just went power mad because she's flying in the air or something is pretty lazy writing. They had some beats they needed to hit and didn't care how fast they had to rush to get there because they wanted to bang this out and go do Star Wars. She has been lucid up until the last episode, just angry, but they tried to convince us via Varys's stupid "coin toss" speech that her vague mental illness has switched on all the sudden. Even her paranoia isn't really a sign of madness, because she ends up being 100% right (Jon betrayed her and Varys tried to poison her). They had the perfect set up for her to just go ballistic on the Red Keep even after the bells (because she's always been ruthless when dispensing justice against enemies) and to get carried away, but they turned her into a super villain who took her sweet time sadistically attacking civilians instead of directly attacking Cersei. They're foreshadowing was not as effective as they want us to think, and if they have to explain the story beats in their post-episode interviews because the episodes themselves are not doing it effectively, something is wrong in the execution. Critics and audiences are largely on the same page on this one, and the actors (especially Clarke) can barely conceal their disappointment.

I don't ask this to be easy for Jon. It should be hard and he shouldn't want to do it, but he shouldn't need to be convinced that it needs to be done and continue saying "she's the queen" when she's become Darth Dany.

Again, he's being put in a position where he needs to murder the woman he loves. I don't think he can be faulted for needing someone to help him do what needs to be done there. Jon would probably have difficulty killing almost anyone in that sort of matter... but to do it to the woman he loves? THe fact that it goes against his sense of honor and duty makes it even worse.

Jon is a good person, but he's only human. Yes, he showed weakness... it happens. I think he should be credited for being able to do what needed to be done despite the personal consequence. Given the type of person he is, it shouldn't be all that suprising that he would have problems with it. He wanted to be talked out of it because frankly he was hoping he didn't have to do it. He was hoping there was another way... anyone in his position would feel that way.

[Theleviathan]

How you get somewhere is everything in story-telling. The end itself is just the end.

Well, to that point, the story telling in Martin's recent works have been largely poor. Or at least declining in quality.

The show certainly rushed the pacing. Here's the thing though: Martin can't pace at all. He's stuck. People keep trying to give him excuses about TV projects and other works, but the truth? Those aren't what is crippling his writing. His writing crippled his writing. He is so stuck he seeks those things out for relief because his magnum opus is broken.

D&D deserve criticism, but don't delude yourself. This is Martin's ending and he will never get anywhere close to telling it. Not because of age or health, but because he lost his narrative a long time ago and cannot find it again.

[XPac]

Not sure why he came back to life. Should have just stayed dead. Turned into the 3rd most disappointing character in the whole show behind only the NK and Jamie.

He came back to life because he was needed. No one else could have united everyone against the dead the way Jon did. Despite not killing the NK he was still the most important person there. And he saved Westeros from Dany on top of that. So he basically saved the world twice.

[XPac]

See "tricking" us into rooting for Dany when she was actually a villain would be clever, but if you're going to do that, you need to be consistent with it.

I find it passing odd the show expects me to regard Dany's torching of Randyl Tarly as proof of her madness...but also cheer Arya cooking Walder Frey's sons into a pie and feeding it to him as bad-ass.
Why am I supposed to see Dany killing Dothraki leaders as an example of how terrible she is...but Sansa feeding Ramsay Bolton to his hounds as justice?
Or executing slave owners versus Jon Snow executing a begging and pleading Janos Slynt?

Yes, Dany has done questionable things—usually to worse people. She has made mistakes—some she's been shown to regret.
But so has every other heroic character in the show.

So if Dany's journey was foreshadowing her slaughtering innocent people in King's Landing, when can we expect Arya to start butchering random innocent people for no reason? Was she not told she had a darkness in her and that she should close many eyes forever?
Oh, right, apparently that was foreshadowing her saving the goddamn world from White Walkers!

It's awfully late for the show to pull that kind of moralism. You can't have almost every hero engage in moral ambiguity just to suddenly declare, oh nope, it was only bad when Dany did it. It doesn't work that way. You have to be consistent with your framing.

And...as others have already pointed out...it's a pretty big and sudden leap to go from burning slave-owners and marauding rapists to torching innocent civilians because...f*** it.

They must have done something right as far as foreshadowing Danys turn, because people have frankly been speculating this for years. It's not like the discussion about Dany doing this very thing only started up a few weeks ago. It's frankly been around the entire history of the show.

They did a good enough job of planting the seed that she could potentially go the Anakin route for people to consider it, without being completely obvious about it. And that's actualy a pretty tricky balancing act.

[XPac]

Exactly. Nothing Dany did was out of the realm of what other characters had done until she decided inexplicably to stir fry children.

A lot of other characters in this show are pretty horrible people. It's not like Dany is alone in this regard.

[Lord Falcon]

Awright, so first I want to point out a couple of things I thought were done really well from this last season, to make clear I'm not just jumping on a bandwagon of complaint, or dismissing this season out of hand as not being as good as the previous:

One was Theon's return to defend Winterfell against the Night King's army, and the way the Starks received him for it. Sansa's embracing him and Bran's thanking him, saying he was a good man and was "home" were I thought emotionally powerful moments, and probably the most human either of those characters felt this season. And it was a fantastic ending to Theon's redemption arc. You almost couldn't really mourn his dying in the battle, because he was dying as a hero, a human, a Stark, an Ironborn ... you know, instead of as Reek, or any of the many worse ways he could have died, previously.

Another thing done really well was Brienne's standing and speaking up for Jaime, when he would otherwise likely have been executed, and later his knighting her. Both were well acted and written moments, and both felt organic to me ... these moments felt like a realistic evolution of the individual characters, and of their complex and complicated relationships with one another. From where they began as enemies with nothing but contempt for one another, I felt like these moments showed how their shared respect for honor and duty brought them as close to one another as either character is capable of being. It was really just very well done.

But, secondly, I want to also point out that I do not dislike the ending of the series just because it's not the fairy-tale ending I would have hoped for the characters I like. Even before the Night King had an ice dragon all his own, I really felt like we the audience should not feel surprised or cheated if the last season was all the characters being sequentially killed off as the Night King's army swept through Westeros, with the series finale being their taking King's Landing, an army of the undead staring across the Narrow Sea, having killed every living thing on the one side, already. The army of the undead had been shown as unbeatable, as only growing stronger with every battle, so how should we have not seen that coming, if it were the end that was written? Not what we would have wanted surely, but consistent to the last, it would have been.

So no, I'm not unhappy that my favorite characters did not get a happily-ever-after ending.

That said, Dany's turning all Mad Queen was super abrupt and not well executed, at all. It was not consistent to even this one season, let alone to her series-wide character arc. Likewise Jon, Tyrion, Varys, Jaime, Cersei and more just behaved in arbitrary and inconsistent ways that certainly served to wrap up all the narratives quickly and neatly, but unfortunately did not do justice to the characters as they had been previously established.

Yeah, it definitely could have been worse. It just could have been a whole lot better, too. We're all entitled to like what we like of course, but I don't think there's any justification to suggest that fans who have been with the series from start are just complaining arbitrarily or dishonestly. We're complaining because the series really has dropped off quite a bit in quality.

This part, I completely agree with. The writers stretched and broke all suspension of disbelief to push Dany into madness. Every character serving her was handed the idiot ball. Even things that couldn't possibly go wrong went wrong, like Euron building a massive Iron Fleet after Yara took the better half of the Iron Islands' navy.

Episode 6 is great in what it does in a self-contained manner. If they had made the build up to this finale better, Season 8 would have reached greatness. Instead it's a rushed mess with 1 meh episode and 2 horrible episodes.

[Lord Falcon]

I really appreciated that even after all he had seen, Jon Snow wasn't willing to do the right and best thing because it was dishonorable. And Tyrion finally convinced him to do the dishonorable thing by adding his love for his family on top of all of that. Jon Snow truly is Ned's son in spirit.